“Through the hills and canyons, along the sandy beaches, we hear in the wind a chorus of voices whispering ‘welcome.’”

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Irwin Jacobs feels pretty strongly about San Diego.

“We came out in ’66, and I think it took about 10 minutes to adjust to the city. And we’ve been enjoying it ever since,” said Jacobs, who with his wife, Joan, has given millions of dollars to artistic, cultural, social and educational endeavors in his adopted city.

So who better to turn to when you need someone to speak eloquently about this city’s charms?

“The symphony asked me to write something because of the centennial,” said composer Marvin Hamlisch. “And I said it seemed to me we should get somebody who really loved and knew San Diego to write some sort of text and I could write something around it. We’re thrilled to get Irwin Jacobs. He wrote a beautiful text. It’s really quite lovely.”

Jacobs is not about to take all the credit, saying that he had some help and that Hamlisch “polished up” the final version. But he feels comfortable enough with it to be the narrator in the work’s premiere in the first of three San Diego Symphony Centennial Season opening concerts this weekend at Copley Symphony Hall. (Bill Walton will narrate Saturday’s performance.)

“I’m looking forward to seeing how this all does work out,” Jacobs said.

In addition to narrator and orchestra, the piece includes a children’s choir that enters in the final section, singing a paraphrase of the text set to a theme woven throughout the work.

“The children show there is a future,” Hamlisch said. “This goes on, and on, and on.”

Maybe “San Diego” will also have a future. With its distinctive San Diego theme, is it the anthem the city has long been searching for?

“This is not really quite that, to be honest with you,” Hamlisch said. “It would have to be — what’s the word? — commercialized in order to pull that off, meaning, I’d have to take and make it ultra accessible. That’s not to say it can’t be done, but it couldn’t be done quite as it is now. What it is now is part of a seven-minute serious piece.”

Meanwhile, Hamlisch hopes to program it on one of the symphony’s winter pops concerts, where he is principal pops conductor. He has a similar title in nearly a half-dozen cities, but he has a special feeling about San Diego.

“First of all, the sheer beauty of it is amazing,” he said. “And there’s a ready-get-up-gomanship that I love. I am amazed how many things started in San Diego. I’m amazed by it all. And I think people are very proud of it. That’s really nice; it’s really good.”